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The Germans had wedged themselves in, as they were crowding through the islands wherever there were commercial chances. There were, of course, some English. There always are, no matter what the loneliness and distance. And a twinkling of French presence remained. Where the French have planted seed the lotus has the sweetest flavour, and deadliest.

Everybody in the town took an interest in the arrival of every craft, and any news that she brought was haggled to pieces for days. Whenever a ship swung around the treacherous, low-lying horn of the bay, deeply thrust into the channel like a dagger, all the town knew of its coming. On the cool twilight side of the club veranda men would stir faintly on long cane chairs, and mutter among themselves; the house boy would be sent off with a telescope, and from his description of her rig the eaters of the lotus and drinkers of the highball would dispute without energy and without anger, bet this or that, usually in champagne; then with the slow, stiff listlessness of corpses getting off their slabs, these idle shapes in ghostly duck would pass through their cool shadows, and come into the sun, where they mingled with other shapes from other shadows, on the way to the beach.